Follow the Constitution

Our problem right now is that we have so many politicians and very few statesmen. One big indication of this is former President Fidel Ramos demanding that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo resign to hasten the proposal that the country shifts from a presidential to a parliamentary form of government. President Arroyo has been elected to serve as our head of state till 2010. The shift from presidential to parliamentary is just a proposal and has not even been approved by the people. What kind of a government official would demand the President’s cutting down her own term of office to accommodate those who want a shift from presidential to parliamentary so they can run again for office? Certainly, not a statesman. Ramos at the moment is not even a government official. He is an ex-official. The least he can do is to observe proper decorum. He should set the example of citizens who want the Constitution to prevail. Instead he wants the President to do what would be advantageous to him personally instead of upholding the Constitution. It is too early to be thinking about any kind of elections now. We are not a banana republic. If Ramos has his way, we will be a camote republic.

What Ramos is trying to do is to revive what has already died down and that is the opposition’s demand that President Arroyo step down from office. This demand never picked up, first, they never gave the reason why she should step down; second, they never even said who would take over. Instead, they said what would take over and that was a provisional government. In short, they wanted the country to go from a constitutional to a provisional regime. Isn’t that a giant step backward?

President Arroyo’s administration is doing well. The best proof for this is the strength of the peso today. It is one of the most stable currencies. The least any fair-minded citizen can do is to give credit where it is due. I’m not saying that there should be no opposition. But the opposition must follow the Constitution. We must have leaders who believe in democracy. That cannot be said of Ramos. He was part of the dictatorial regime of Ferdinand Marcos and was one of the first who betrayed Marcos when it no longer served his purpose.

What we would like to see is a united opposition that will come out with its own program of government. As it is now, the opposition is composed merely of people or groups who want President Arroyo to voluntarily step down from office, something that will never happen.

The opposition says that Pres. Arroyo should step down because she has a credibility crisis. It follows that whoever takes her place and we mean through elections, must not have a credibility problem. Who is the oppositionist who does not have that problem?